Ashley Bloomfield
Sir Ashley Robin Bloomfield KNZM (born March 1966) is a New Zealand public health official. He served as the chief executive of the Ministry of Health and the country's Director-General of Health from 2018 to 2022. He was the public-facing health specialist liaising with the media during the COVID-19 pandemic in New Zealand on behalf of the government, from the first press conference on 27 January 2020.
Sir Ashley Bloomfield
Chai Chuah
3
Public health official
Early life and family[edit]
Bloomfield was born in Napier[1] in March 1966,[2] one of three children of Allan Olaf Bloomfield and Myreine Alice Bloomfield (née Osborne).[3][4][5] His mother was a schoolteacher, while his father was a lieutenant colonel in the Royal New Zealand Infantry Regiment (Territorial Force) and a manager at Mitsubishi Motors in Porirua, and was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1974 New Year Honours.[3][4][6]
Bloomfield grew up in Tawa, a suburb of Wellington, and was educated at Scots College, where he was head prefect,[3] dux, played 1st XV rugby[7] and was a member of the cast of the college's production of Oklahoma![8]
Bloomfield graduated Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Auckland in 1990.[9][3] About the same time, he married his wife, Libby, also a doctor, and the couple went on to have three children.[3]